IT'S EARLY MARCH IN ALASKA. While residents of the Lower 48 are pulling out their bicycles for spring overhauls and thumbing through flower catalogs, Alaskans are still committed to winter. Snowmobiles - or snow machines, as they call them up north - remain in heavy rotation. The ice that owns Finger Lake, the fourth checkpoint along the Iditarod trail, won't break up until at least six weeks from now.

The race was first run in 1973, to commemorate the 1925 dog sled run that delivered medicine that saved Nome from a diphtheria outbreak. It is now one of the most popular sporting events in Alaska and usually draws national attention. Top teams take about nine days to cover the 1,150-mile distance and reach the finish line, a burled wooden arch in Nome. Rookies may spend more than two weeks on the trail, which has 25 or 26 checkpoints, depending on which route is being used in a particular year. "The Iditarod is my vacation," says 11-time Iditarod finisher Lynda Plettner, 56. "I work all year to go out there and half kill myself. I'm not the type that wants to get on a bus and watch a glacier calving. I could watch that on a video and get almost the same effect. Not so with the Iditarod. That takes planning and timing and hard work. Then you get to go across Alaska - with a dog team, which, in my case, are my best friends."

These best friends are no fancy show dogs; they're mutts. Though, as Plettner makes clear, they're mutts with a pedigree that goes back about 60 years. Some dogs become legends. "You can just say a dog's name, like Sailor or Pluto or Granite, and everybody knows who you're talking about," she says.